ON RUGBY/Gerry Thornley: It hardly seems fair, does it? Collectively, the three competing Irish provinces have never actually done better in the pool stages over the seven-year history of the Heineken Cup. Yet their reward is only two qualifiers and they end up playing last year's two finalists, Stade Francais and Leicester, away from home. Thems the breaks, but in point of fact it isn't fair.

Individually even, Leinster's record of five wins out of six is their best ever, while Munster's tally of 10 points equals their best ever, their try tally of 19 surpassing last season's haul of 17 and equalling the mark two seasons ago when, in both cases, they were rewarded with a home quarter-final. What's more, Ulster's eight-point haul is only one less than in the season three years ago when they went on to win the Cup.

Munster's and Leinster's opponents in the last eight owe their home quarter-finals to having been served up Italian cannon-fodder, while the main reason Ulster - in the same group as Stade Francais - were edged out altogether with a ranking of ninth was that they were served up the stronger of the two Italian outfits, Treviso.

Stade obtained a ranking of second ahead of the other three teams on 10 points because they were able to dip their bread for the second year running against Italian whipping boys (last year it was L'Aquila). This season, Stade scored 13 of their 23 tries in their two meetings with Treviso.

A large factor in Leicester edging out Leinster by dint of scoring 17 tries to Leinster's tally of 15 was because they were able to score 10 of those tries against Calvisano. Leinster, pitted with Toulouse, Newport and Newcastle, might reasonably argue that theirs deserved greater kudos.

However, arguably the most unfair advantage of all belonged to Llanelli. They edged out Ulster, amongst others, as one of the second-placed teams by virtue of scoring 22 tries to Ulster's 17, each having accumulated eight points. But this was entirely because they drew the luckier straw in the weaker of the two Italian sides.

After all, Llanelli had the poorest try count of any side in the competition against fellow top-three sides, scoring just two tries in four meetings with Leicester and Perpignan. Yep, a ridiculous 20 of their 22 tries were scored in the two meetings with Calvisano, compared to Ulster who scored 11 of their 17 tries against Calvisano.

This makes a bit of a mockery of the group stages, with everyone hoping for a plum Italian draw. You also wonder what it's doing for the Italians, when the likes of Leicester and Llanelli know they must dip their bread against them. It's discrepancies like all of these which made some European soccer qualifying campaigns at international level decide to only take into account goal averages against other leading sides.

Looking ahead, Munster will hopefully be nearer full strength and actually ought to be in better shape than they were for the losing semi-final against Stade Francais last season. There also remains the hope that mentally Leinster will be stronger in Leicester than they would be in France, for no matter how much coaches and players may deny it, mental hurdles do build up with losing sequences.

Leinster's record Euro loss on Sunday constituted their fifth defeat out of five appearances on French soil in the Cup. By comparison, Leinster have won on their last three visits to England. Contrastingly, Munster have a better record in France than they do in England. Maybe, ahem, the quarter-final pairings have worked out for the best.

"Leicester are probably saying anyone but us (Leinster)," opined Leinster coach Matt Williams somewhat grandly on Sunday in Toulouse. "We have a great record against Leicester over the years. Welford Road is a great venue. I've been there a number of times and I've coached teams there and I love it. "

In the English team's last 50 home games, Leinster are the only team to have beaten Leicester, but as Williams concedes: "They were out (of the competition) and they put out a weakened team. I don't mean to downgrade our win, they put in a number of replacements and rested guys, but it was still a great win. In our own minds we've got confidence we can go and win."

Still, you can't help but feel Ireland's entries deserved better. Their combined haul of 14 wins out of 18 ties gives them comfortably the best winning percentage for the first time ever in the pool stages, their 77 per cent ratio coming in ahead of France (64 per cent), England (50 per cent), Wales (40 per cent), Scotland (30 per cent) and Italy (eight per cent).

At least they've aleady done enough to ensure that Ireland will have three entries again next season, as two quarter-finalists already means that, like the French, English and Welsh, they've outperformed the Scots and the Italians.

As an aside, none of this seems to have panned out well for the Ireland management. Almost certainly the last thing the bulk of the Munster and Leinster players need is another week's fairly intensive training with their Irish colleagues in Limerick this week. By the end of this week, Leinster's players will have been in five different places over a 20-day period in which they'll have spent two nights at home.

A rest would be preferable, more likely, to help recharge their batteries for the quarter-finals the following week. But then again, if Eddie O'Sullivan, Declan Kidney, Niall O'Donovan and Mike Ford didn't have any introductory time with the leading players this week, they would be jumping aboard in the match week of the Six Nations opener against Wales straight after quarter-final weekend.

Indeed, in an ideal world the Ireland management would have even more time than they are getting and realistically team Ireland should be receiving priority over teams Munster and Leinster. The players can only be spread around so much.

Ireland may have the best structure, but the hopeless and worsening Northern Hemisphere structures sometimes means it counts for nothing.

gthornley@irish-times.ie